Elizaveta of the Island
by Pikkushi
Summary: Gilbert was a very good childhood friend, nothing more. So why, then, does Elizaveta not feel right about hooking up with Roderich?
1. Gilbert Speaks

**Title**: Elizaveta of the Island

**Author**: me

**Characters**: Hungary as Anne, Prussia as Gilbert (lol), Austria as Roy

**A/N**: Very very unoriginal parody of L. M. Montgomery's _Anne of the Island, _the third book in her _Anne of the Island_ series. Posted as a kink meme fill.

**Disclaimer**: HETALIA AXIS POWERS BELONGS TO HIMARUYA HIDEKAZ, NOT ME. If it was mine, Gilbert and Elizaveta would have ended up together (maybe?)

ANNE OF THE ISLANDS BELONGS TO LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY, NOT ME. If it was mine, Roy would have been less insensitive (imvho)

* * *

**Elizaveta of the Island**

**Gilbert Speaks**

Elizaveta was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace. She was building a castle in air - a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby's perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine. She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard. Of late she had managed not to be left alone with Gilbert. But he had caught her fairly now.

Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.

"Don't these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Elizaveta?"

Elizavteta took them and buried her face in them.

"Isn't this a delightful evening?" said Elizaveta, without any very clear idea of what she was saying. She wished desperately that someone, anyone would come by. "Do you know, I found a cluster of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today? I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine."

"You are always discovering gold mines," said Gilbert - also absently.

"Let us go and see if we can find some more," suggested Elizaveta eagerly. "I'll call Feliks and - "

"Never mind Feliks and the violets just now, Liz," said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. "There is something I want to say to you."

"Oh, don't say it," cried Elizaveta, pleadingly. "Don't - PLEASE, Gilbert."

"I must. Things can't go on like this any longer. Elizaveta, I love you. You know I do. I - I can't tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you'll be my wife?"

"I - I can't," said Elizaveta miserably. "Oh, Gilbert - you - you've spoiled everything."

"Don't you care for me at all?" Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Elizaveta had not dared to look up.

"Not - not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend. But I don't love you, Gilbert."

"But can't you give me some hope that you will - yet?"

"No, I can't," exclaimed Elizaveta desperately. "I never, never can love you - in that way - Gilbert. You must never speak of this to me again."

There was another pause - so long and so dreadful that Elizaveta was driven at last to look up. Gilbert's face was white to the lips. And his eyes - but Elizaveta shuddered and looked away. There was nothing romantic about this. Must proposals be either grotesque or - horrible? Could she ever forget Gilbert's face?

"Is there anybody else?" he asked at last in a low voice.

"No - no," said Elizaveta eagerly. "I don't care for any one like THAT - and I LIKE you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. And we must - we must go on being friends, Gilbert."

Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.

"Friends! Your friendship can't satisfy me, Liz. I want your love - and you tell me I can never have that."

"I'm sorry. Forgive me, Gilbert," was all Elizaveta could say. Where, oh, where were all the gracious and graceful speeches wherewith, in imagination, she had been wont to dismiss rejected suitors?

Gilbert released her hand gently.

"There isn't anything to forgive. There have been times when I thought you did care. I've deceived myself, that's all. Goodbye, Elizaveta."

Elizaveta got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind the pines, and cried bitterly. She felt as if something incalculably precious had gone out of her life. It was Gilbert's friendship, of course. Oh, why must she lose it after this fashion? Well, it was all Gilbert's fault. He had spoiled their beautiful comradeship. She must just learn to live without it.


	2. Enter Prince Charming

**Elizaveta of the Island**

**Enter Prince Charming**

Gilbert came occasionally on Friday evenings. He seemed always in good spirits, and held his own in the jests and repartee that flew about. He neither sought nor avoided Elizaveta. When circumstances brought them in contact he talked to her pleasantly and courteously, as to any newly-made acquaintance. The old camaraderie was gone entirely. Elizaveta felt it keenly; but she told herself she was very glad and thankful that Gilbert had got so completely over his disappointment in regard to her. She had really been afraid, that April evening in the orchard, that she had hurt him terribly and that the wound would be long in healing. Now she saw that she need not have worried. Men have died and the worms have eaten them but not for love. Gilbert evidently was in no danger of immediate dissolution. He was enjoying life, and he was full of ambition and zest. For him there was to be no wasting in despair because a woman was fair and cold. Elizaveta wondered if she had only imagined that look in his eyes when she had told him she could never care for him.

There were not lacking those who would gladly have stepped into Gilbert's vacant place. But Elizaveta snubbed them without fear and without reproach. If the real Prince Charming was never to come she would have none of a substitute. So she sternly told herself that gray day in the windy park.

Suddenly, rain came with a swish and rush. Elizaveta put up her umbrella and hurried down the slope. As she turned out on the harbor road a savage gust of wind tore along it. Instantly her umbrella turned wrong side out. Anne clutched at it in despair. And then - there came a voice close to her.

"Pardon me - may I offer you the shelter of my umbrella?"

Elizaveta looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking - violet, melancholy, inscrutable eyes - melting, musical, sympathetic voice - yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he had been made to order.

"Thank you," she said confusedly.

"We'd better hurry over to that little pavillion on the point," suggested the unknown. "We can wait there until this shower is over. It is not likely to rain so heavily very long."

The words were very commonplace, but oh, the tone! And the smile which accompanied them! Elizaveta felt her heart beating strangely.

Together they scurried to the pavilion and sat breathlessly down under its friendly roof. Elizaveta laughingly held up her false umbrella.

"It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of the total depravity of inanimate things," she said gaily.

The raindrops sparkled on her shining hair; its loosened rings curled around her neck and forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes big and starry. Her companion looked down at her admiringly. She felt herself blushing under his gaze. Who could he be?

"We are schoolmates, I see," he said, smiling at Elizaveta's colors. "That ought to be sufficient introduction. My name is Roderich Edelstein. And you are Miss Hedervary, aren't you?"

"Yes; but I cannot place you at all," said Elizaveta, frankly. "Please, where DO you belong?"

"I feel as if I didn't belong anywhere yet. I put in my Freshman and Sophomore years at Gakuen Hetalia two years ago. I've been in Europe ever since. Now I've come back to finish my Music course."

"This is my Junior year, too," said Elizaveta.

"So we are classmates as well as schoolmates. I am reconciled to the loss of the years that the locust has eaten," said her companion, with a world of meaning in those wonderful eyes of his.

The rain came steadily down for the best part of an hour. But the time seemed really very short. When the clouds parted and a burst of pale November sunshine fell athwart the harbor and the pines. Elizaveta and her companion walked home together. By the time they had reached the gate of the boarding house he had asked permission to call, and had received it. Elizaveta went in with cheeks of flame and her heart beating to her fingertips.

She lay long awake that night, nor did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those purple glorious eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Elizaveta was very strongly inclined to think he had.


	3. False Dawn

**Elizaveta of the Island**

**False Dawn**

Roderich asked Elizaveta to marry him in the little pavilion on the harbor where they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting. Elizaveta thought it very romantic that he should have chosen that spot. And his proposal was as beautifully worded as if he had copied it out of a "How to Propose to a Hungarian Romanticist" Manual. The whole effect was quite flawless. And it was also sincere. There was no doubt that Roderich meant what he said. There was no false note to jar the symphony. Elizaveta felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot. But she wasn't; she was horribly cool. When Roderich paused for his answer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes. And then - she found herself trembling as if she were reeling back from a precipice. To her came one of those moments when we realize, as by a blinding flash of illumination, more than all our previous years have taught us. She pulled her hand from Roderich's.

"Oh, I can't marry you - I can't - I can't," she cried, wildly.

Roderich turned pale - and also looked rather foolish. He had - small blame to him - felt very sure.

"What do you mean?" he stammered.

"I mean that I can't marry you," repeated Elizaveta desperately. "I thought I could - but I can't."

"Why can't you?" Roderich asked more calmly.

"Because - I don't care enough for you."

A crimson streak came into Roderich's face.

"So you've just been amusing yourself these two years?" he said slowly.

"No, no, I haven't," gasped poor Elizaveta. Oh, how could she explain? She COULDN'T explain. There are some things that cannot be explained. "I did think I cared - truly I did - but I know now I don't."

"You have ruined my life," said Roderich bitterly.

"Forgive me," pleaded Elizaveta miserably, with hot cheeks and stinging eyes.

Roderich turned away and stood for a few minutes looking out seaward. When he came back to Elizaveta, he was very pale again.

"You can give me no hope?" he said.

Elizaveta shook her head mutely.

"Then - good-bye," said Roderich. "I can't understand it - I can't believe you are not the woman I've believed you to be. But reproaches are idle between us. You are the only woman I can ever love. I thank you for your friendship, at least. Good-bye, Elizaveta."

"Good-bye," faltered Elizaveta. When Roderich had gone she sat for a long time in the pavilion, watching a white mist creeping subtly and remorselessly landward up the harbor. It was her hour of humiliation and self-contempt and shame. Their waves went over her. And yet, underneath it all, was a queer sense of recovered freedom.

* * *

"You - you REFUSED him?" said Feliks blankly.

"Yes."

"Elizaveta Hedervary, are you really, like, in your senses?"

"I think so," said Elizaveta wearily. "Oh, Feliks, don't scold me. You don't understand."

"I totally don't understand. You've, like, encouraged Roderich Edelstein in every way for two years - and now you tell me you've refused him? Girl, you've just been flirting scandalously with him! Elizaveta, I couldn't have believed it of YOU."

"I WASN'T flirting with him - I honestly thought I cared up to the last minute - and then - well, I just knew I NEVER could marry him."

"Well, I totally think you have treated Roderich shamefully," said Feliks in exasperation. "He's, like, handsome and clever and rich and good. What more do you want?"

"I want some one who BELONGS in my life. He doesn't. I was swept off my feet at first by his good looks and knack of playing romantic instruments; and later on I thought I MUST be in love because he was my dark-haired ideal."

"Well, I suppose there's, like, no use in saying anything to you."

"There is no need, Feliks. I'm in the dust. This has spoiled everything backwards. I can never think of Gakuen days without recalling the humiliation of this evening. Roderich despises me - and you despise me - and I despise myself."

"You poor darling," said Feliks, melting. "Just come here and let me comfort you. I have, like, no right to scold you after all. Oh, Elizaveta, things are so mixed-up in real life, huh? They totally aren't clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels."

"I hope that NO one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as I live," sobbed poor Elizaveta, devoutly believing that she meant it.


	4. A Book of Revelation

**Elizaveta of the Island**

**A Book of Revelation**

"I've grown a whole inch since you left," said Peter proudly. "I'm as tall as Raivis Galante now. Ain't I glad. He'll have to stop crowing about being bigger. Say, Elizaveta, did you know that Gilbert Beilschmidt is dying?" Elizaveta stood quite silent and motionless, looking at Peter. Her face had gone so white that Helena thought she was going to faint.

"Peter, hold your tongue," said Khemet angrily. "Elizaveta, don't look like that - DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT! We didn't mean to tell you so suddenly."

"Is - it - true?" asked Elizaveta in a voice that was not hers.

"Gilbert is very ill," said Khemet gravely. "He took down with typhoid fever just after you left. Did you never hear of it?"

"No," said that unknown voice.

"It was a very bad case from the start. The doctor said he'd been terribly run down. They've a trained nurse and everything's been done. DON'T look like that, Elizaveta. While there's life there's hope."

"Mr. Braginski was here this evening and he said they had no hope of him," reiterated Peter.

Helena, looking old and worn and tired, got up and marched Peter grimly out of the kitchen.

"Oh, DON'T look so, dear," said Khemet, putting her kind old arms about the pallid girl. "I haven't given up hope, indeed I haven't. He's got the Beilschmidt constitution in his favor, that's what."

Elizaveta gently put Khemet's arms away from her, walked blindly across the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs to her old room. At its window she knelt down, staring out unseeingly. It was very dark. The rain was beating down over the shivering fields. The Haunted Woods was full of the groans of mighty trees wrung in the tempest, and the air throbbed with the thunderous crash of billows on the distant shore. And Gilbert was dying!

There is a book of Revelation in every one's life, as there is in the Bible. Elizaveta read hers that bitter night, as she kept her agonized vigil through the hours of storm and darkness. She loved Gilbert - had always loved him! She knew that now. She knew that she could no more cast him out of her life without agony than she could have cut off her right hand and cast it from her. And the knowledge had come too late - too late even for the bitter solace of being with him at the last. If she had not been so blind - so foolish - she would have had the right to go to him now. But he would never know that she loved him - he would go away from this life thinking that she did not care. Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her! She could not live through them - she could not! She cowered down by her window and wished, for the first time in her young life, that she could die, too. If Gilbert went away from her, without one word or sign or message, she could not live. Nothing was of any value without him. She belonged to him and he to her. In her hour of supreme agony she had no doubt of that. Oh, what a fool she had been not to realize what the bond was that had held her to Gilbert - to think that the flattered fancy she had felt for Roderich Edelstein had been love. And now she must pay for her folly as for a crime.

A storm raged all night, but when the dawn came it was spent. Elizaveta saw a fairy fringe of light on the skirts of darkness. Soon the eastern hilltops had a fire-shot ruby rim. The clouds rolled themselves away into great, soft, white masses on the horizon; the sky gleamed blue and silvery. A hush fell over the world.

Elizaveta rose from her knees and crept downstairs. The freshness of the rain-wind blew against her white face as she went out into the yard, and cooled her dry, burning eyes. A merry rollicking whistle was lilting up the lane. A moment later Feliciano Vargas came in sight.

Elizaveta's physical strength suddenly failed her. If she had not clutched at a low willow bough she would have fallen. Feliciano and Gilbert's brother, Ludwig, were fond of each other, and the Italian always spends time with the Beilschmidts. Feliciano would know if - if - Feliciano would know what there was to be known.

Feliciano strode sturdily on along the red lane, whistling. He did not see Elizaveta. She made three futile attempts to call him. He was almost past before she succeeded in making her quivering lips call, "Feliciano!"

Feliciano turned with a grin and a cheerful good morning.

"Did you hear how Gilbert Beilschmidt was this morning?" Elizaveta's desperation drove her to the question. Even the worst would be more endurable than this hideous suspense.

"He's better," said Feliciano. "He got the turn last night. The doctor said he'll be all right now this soon while. Had a close shave, though! That guy, he almost killed himself at college. Well, I must hurry. Fratello seems to be in a hurry to see me."

Feliciano resumed his walk and his whistle. Elizaveta gazed after him with eyes where joy was driving out the strained anguish of the night. He was a very lank, very ragged, very homely youth. But in her sight he was as beautiful as those who bring good tidings on the mountains. Never, as long as she lived, would Elizaveta see Feliciano's brown-haired, round, amber-eyed face without a warm remembrance of the moment when he had given to her the oil of joy for mourning.

Long after Feliciano's whistle had faded into the phantom of music and then into silence far up under the maples of Lover's Lane Elizaveta stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness of life when some great dread has been removed from it. The morning was a cup filled with mist and glamor. In the corner near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood. A sentence from a very old, very true, very wonderful Book came to her lips,

"Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning."


	5. Love Takes Up the Glass of Time

**Elizaveta of the Island**

**Love Takes Up the Glass of Time**

When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Elizaveta waiting for him, fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the preceding night. She wore a beige dress - an old one which Gilbert had told her at a reception he liked especially. It was just the shade of beige that brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry emerald of her eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin. Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath, thought she had never looked so lovely. Elizaveta, glancing sideways at Gilbert, now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness. It was as if he had put boyhood behind him forever.

The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Elizaveta was almost sorry when they reached the garden, and sat down on the old bench. But it was beautiful there, too - as beautiful as it had been on the faraway day she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets; now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement; the mellow air was full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west wind old dreams returned.

"I think," said Elizaveta softly, "that `the land where dreams come true' is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley."

"Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Elizaveta?" asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone - something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard - made Elizaveta's heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly.

"Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful."

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

"I have a dream," he said slowly. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends - and YOU!"

Elizaveta wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her.

"I asked you a question over two years ago, Liz. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?"

Still Elizaveta could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.

They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall - things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood.

"I thought you loved Margarette Williams?," Elizaveta told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roderich Edelstein. Gilbert laughed boyishly.

"Meg was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to the school the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely. So I did. And then I liked Meg for her own sake. She's very shy, but she is one of the nicest girls I've ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn't care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Elizaveta. There was nobody else - there never could be anybody else for me but you. I've loved you ever since that day you whacked your toy frying pan on my head in school."

"I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool," said Elizaveta.

"Well, I tried to stop," said Gilbert frankly, "not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after that sissy Edelstein came on the scene. But I couldn't - and I can't tell you, either, what it's meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Feliks Łukasiewicz in which he told me there was really nothing between you and Rod, and advised me to `try again.' Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that."

Elizaveta laughed - then shivered.

"I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew - I KNEW then - and I thought it was too late."

"But it wasn't, sweetheart. Oh, Liz, this makes up for everything, doesn't it? Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us."

"It's the birthday of our happiness," said Elizaveta softly. "I've always loved this old garden, and now it will be dearer than ever."

"But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Elizaveta," said Gilbert sadly. "It will be four years before I'll finish my engineering course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls."

Elizaveta laughed.

"I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I'm quite as shameless as Feliks about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other - and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now."

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

* * *

...so there. Sorry for the extreme OOC-ness, possible copyright infringement, and generally sloppy tailoring. Thanks for reading~


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